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Overview

Autodesk 3ds Max Essentials teaches the basics of modeling, texturing, animating, and visual effects to familiarize readers with the program as a whole and encourages them to find what aspects of the production pipeline appeal to them. The expository text is reinforced with excellent tutorials, and the companion website includes tutorial files so readers can learn by completing hands-on projects in the book. The tutorials offer realistic, job-related, professional challenges for those new to 3D, and to those coming from another 3D application. Each chapter leads with an introduction to the topic and explains methods, as well as why certain methods are used. Each chapter is richly illustrated with workflow-based projects and examples to make following the sometimes-difficult subject matter much easier and fun. The book evenly covers all aspects a beginner should be familiar with for a solid foundation of 3ds Max. Each chapter features compelling full-color screenshots to illustrate tutorial steps, and chapters conclude with a related and more open-ended project to further reinforce the chapter's lessons. Readers can download starting and ending files for the exercises and additional learning tutorials so that they can start anywhere in the book and compare their results with the pros.

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Meet the Author

Randi L. Derakhshani teaches 3D animation at The ArtInstitute of California and has worked as a digital artist andtechnical director for games and movie projects with Gizmo Games,RJB Enterprises, and Sony.

Dariush Derakhshani is an award-winning visual effectssupervisor, author, and educator. He has worked on movies such asThe Fantastic Four and Pan's Labyrinth, the SouthPark TV series, and numerous commercials and music videos. Heteaches 3D animation and is the author of all of Sybex'sIntroducing Maya books. Dariush and Randi are coauthors of all ofSybex's Introducing 3ds Max books.

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